http://www.sublimefrequencies.com

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Each month, we are focusing on a record label founded by an active digger. This month, Hisham Mayet, co-founder and co-owner of Sublime Frequencies, a label which, since 2003, has been documenting many obscure scenes, from eastern psyche pop to sahel post folk, from ancient to more futuristic.

When did you start digging records?Early 80’s, in my early teens.

What LPs did you buy at first?I was buying punk and post punk LPs. Some early hardcore singles, stuff on SST (Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Black Flag, UK shit, early Cure, Joy Division, New Order, Mekons, Gang of Four, Wire…).

Do you still listen to them?Not so much, but I still have most of it.

Do you have any particular style or favorite period?I don’t have a particular style that I collect. I’m into so many styles and genres. I collect Calypso, Free Jazz, ethnographic records, international sounds from around the globe from the mid-50s to the mid 70s, late 60’s psych from around the world and 60’s/70’s Italian/Euro soundtracks and library LPs… The list is endless. My collection is staggering in its diversity.

Why Sublime Frequencies ?I think it perfectly captures the mission of the label.

Were you at the beginning of story, with Alan Bishop ? How and when did you meet him ?Yes, I approached Alan about the idea to start an ethnographic style label. When we discussed it further, we launched Sublime Frequencies officially in 2003. But, we had already been discussing and collecting for many years prior. I was a fanatical fan of Sun City Girls (Alan’s along with brother Richard and Charles Gocher’s unclassifiable musical universe for some 30 years)… We started communicating with some regularity in the mid-90’s.

What could be the editorial/esthetic line of the label ?We release things we’re passionate about. We all have our own particular aesthetic and the collective is diversified enough to make it interesting moving forward.

What could be your leitmotif for the label?I think our mission statement sums it up pretty well. « Sublime Frequencies is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations. »

How do you decide on the choice of reissues or new releases? Is it a team decision?Alan and I often discuss and have a final say on what is released. We both have very similar tastes so there really is a unified vision moving forward.

or is it more complex ?

If you look at our discography, you’ll see that we are well beyond « oriental/arabic music ». We have outside of SF released (Alan with Abduction/Myself with Outernational/Assophon) over 100 other releases outside of SF. So, we – me as Alan – are not confined to certain geographic regions.

How did you discover musicians like Group Doueh ? Rumors? Listening to a tape?All the rumors are true. I landed in a house in Dakhla un-announced and a cassette and boombox later, history was made.

Were you surprised by the success story of Dabke groover Omar Souleymane?Yes we were. So much so that we decided he was too big for us.

Are you still digging, buying vinyl, visiting record shops?Yep. Still digging. I’m writing from Trinidad now and just spent a day digging in a storage space. I was just in Paris and digging at Superfly. I know Paulo, Manu and Nico and have been shopping there over the years…

What is the best deal/business : to make reissue or to produce new records?Both!

Are they two different jobs?It can be. Re-issues sometimes deal with dead artists or defunct labels and their archives. Sometimes, there is a lot of missing informations when you are dealing with obscure material from a forgotten location. Lots of archeology in that process. Contemporary artists require a different approach and the variable can be much different. There is touring and new material and a host of logistics involved.

There are more and more reissues of old LPs. Do you think that the LP reissue market could ever reach saturation point?I think there is a saturation point, but it is always exciting to see what coming out via the mafia of reissue labels. The production values are amazing as well. I don’t know as a collector, it is an exciting time. But then again as a collector it is always exciting!

What are your next releases ?We are excited about the debut LP of Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band and releasing Thai Pop Spectacular for the first time on vinyl.

What is the LP you dream of reissuing?An 8 LPs boxset of Ennio Morricone conducting a pygmy orchestra playing free jazz.

Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band are a contemporary group from Burkina Faso. Coming from Bobo-Dioulasso, the group is steeped in the Mandingue musical traditions of their ancestral legacy. The enigmatic lead singer Baba Commandant (Mamadou Sanou) is an original and eccentric character who is well respected in the Burkinabé musical community. A sort of punk Faso Dan Fani activist for traditional Mandingo music, Baba continues to redefine the boundaries between traditional and modern. In 1981, he joined the Koule Dafourou troupe as a dancer. Later, he embarked on his current musical direction as a singer, first in Dounia and then in the Afromandingo Band. His current band -- when he's not playing with the now-famous Burkinabé musician Victor Démé -- is the Mandingo Band. At present, he is a practitioner of the Afrobeat style, drawing inspiration from the golden era of Nigerian music. Fela Kuti/Africa 70 and King Sunny Adé are big influences, as is the legendary Malian growler Moussa Doumbia. Baba Commandant plays the ngoni, the instrument of the Donso (the traditional hunters in this region of Burkina Faso and Mali). His audience comprises multiple generations and strata of Burkinabé society; he accordingly adapts his repertoire to his surroundings, which range from cabaret Sundays in Bobo-Dioulasso to the sound systems of Ouagadougou. Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band are a formidable force steeped in Ouagadougou's DIY underground musical culture.Juguya is their sound. Limited edition LP housed in a Stoughton tip-on sleeve.

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Various Artists:

Folk Music of the Sahel Vol. 1: Niger

This year marks the 100th birthday of folklorist Alan Lomax, whose field recordings provided scholars and musicians with essential examples of American folk music. Sublime Frequencies co-founder Hisham Mayet carries on in this tradition with his own series of field recordings that go further than Lomax would have ever dreamed of. The first volume of the new Sublime Frequencies series Folk Music of the Sahel focuses on ethnic groups in Niger, and consists of field recordings Mayet made in his travels through the country in the past decade.

Mayet’s interest in the region stemmed from an ethnographic film about the Bori possession cult of Niger. You can’t get more exotic, and “other” than that, but if the allure of the spirit world was what started Mayet on this journey, he found not just spirit ceremonies but the extraordinary music of ordinary life.

Opening track “Al Fulani” comes from the Hausa region and features two musicians playing the gourmi, three-stringed instruments played with a stick, accompanied by vocals and a talking drum. The traditional string instruments are percussive, and bring complicated polyrhythms to a song that praises the beauty of women in a region of Western Niger. Lyrics aren’t provided, but I imagine this frenetic music boils down to, “I wish they all could be Fulani girls.”

Other tracks from the Hausa region tackle more serious matters. Ceremonial music performed by The Orchestra of the Sultan of Zinder has the chaos of free jazz, vocals and horn lines and drumbeats all in apparent discord from another. But there must be some kind of structure I can’t hear, because the chants are in honor of the Sultan, and you’d think he’d demand order in his praises.

If you came to this set looking for music from possession ceremonies, you won’t be disappointed. “Music for a Hauka Ceremony” is led by a goje, a one or two-stringed fiddle frequently used in possession ceremonies. This track is a rare recording of such a ritual, the musicians performing along with a priest, two mediums and a client in spiritual crisis. It’s distracting that, if you’re wearing good headphones, you can hear someone cough and hock up a luger near the end of the track, but perhaps this unceremonious sound is a signal that the spirit was expelled and the ritual was a success. The album includes a brief recording of a second possession ceremony in which the goje solo septs out from the traditional rhythm for some free spirited, incantatory improv.

Traditional instruments are featured through much of the set, but Niger is also known for a vibrant modern music scene. The seven-minute “Denke Denke” is guitar-heavy music for a Fulani wedding. “Bismillhia” is a collaboration between Ousenni, master of the stringed molo, and Koudede, a beloved Tuareg guitarist who died in a car accident in 2012. Those intrigued by this sound should track down music by Mdou Moctar, whose modernized Tuareg guitar music with electronic treatments are featured on albums released by the Sahel Sounds label. The booklet that accompanies Folk Music of the Sahel includes vividly colorful photographs of the people of Niger. I wish there were more photos to accompany the set, but as Sublime Frequencies has promised more volumes in this series, I’ll just have to wait for their next exploration of the region.

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES

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http://www.sublimefrequencies.com

I happen to live in an area of the country that is rather optimistically dubbed “The Sun Belt,” but whoever gave it that name has never spent a February in North Carolina. We are in the cold, gray days my friends, and Punxsutawney Phil has forsaken us. Thank God, then, for the sunny sounds of Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band to carry us through these dire times. Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band (henceforth BCMB) hail from Burkina Faso and play a heady brew of Afrobeat and folk music rooted in the Burkinan tradition. Their bouncy jam “Juguya” makes you want to dance until you can’t feel your feet anymore, but it’s not just fun and games: there’s plenty of grit to go around.

On “Juguya,” Baba Commandant alternately croons and howls his way through waves of dense funk, his voice shifting back and forth like a nimble reveler threading their way across the dance floor. His donso ngoni, a traditional West African hunter’s harp, skitters underneath the electric instrumentation, giving the song’s monster Afrobeat funk a delicate skeleton upon which it ceaselessly dances. Towards the song’s conclusion a saxophone cuts in and picks up speed, racing pell-mell onward to collapse at the finish line, utterly spent. It’s a sentiment anyone who listens to this track can appreciate. Sublime Frequencies is slated to release the JuguyaLP in late February. I think I speak for all my fellow stir-crazy, frozen-ass Sun Belters when I say it can’t come soon enough.

Friday February 6th

doors: 7:30 pm - show: 8:00 PM

180 Shaw Street, Studio 101, Toronto

Price: $10

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SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research, and the pioneering recording labels of the past including OCORA, SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS, ETHNIC FOLKWAYS, LYRICHORD, NONESUCH EXPLORER, MUSICAPHONE, BARONREITER, UNESCO, PLAYASOUND, MUSICAL ATLAS, CHANT DU MONDE, B.A.M., TANGENT, and TOPIC.

— SUBLIME FREQUENCIES

PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

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About Me

Ministre de Psychedelia. Number Station Operative. Sublime Frequencies' Spectral Presence. Writer, Musician, Visual Artist and D.J. / Former employee with the East German Embassy in Morocco. www.RobertJaz.com